


free falling love addict

by hollowboness



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexual Tension, Some sort of tension, Yelling, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowboness/pseuds/hollowboness
Summary: in which Jonny realizes he loves Tim (and Tim doesn't vibe)
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina, Jonny d'Ville/Gunpowder Tim
Comments: 27
Kudos: 107





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> thank you mechscord for putting this idea in my brain, and thank you Riz for proofreading this :3
> 
> kudos and comments are always appreciated (comments>kudos)
> 
> (also, title from poplar street by the glass animals)

It hadn’t started too long after Tim joined the crew. Maybe a month after he joined, Jonny started to feel angry at Tim. Just constantly angry at him, regardless of what he did (or didn’t do). Maybe it wasn’t anger, but Jonny couldn’t figure out what else it might be for the life of him, so he called it anger. Now, this went on for years, and it fueled him to start a number of ill-advised gunfights with Tim (which he almost always lost). And it made him angry. It made him angry when Tim won a fight, it made him angry when Tim decided to fight up close and personal, knock the gun from Jonny’s hand and press the barrel of his shotgun against Jonny’s chest. It made Jonny angry when Tim corrected him whenever he called himself the Captain. It made Jonny angry whenever Tim winked at him before charging into one war or another.

On one notable occasion, Tim and Jonny had been sitting together, playing Mahjongg,

“Jonny, that’s cheating,” Tim said, as Jonny placed a tile

“No, it’s not,” he said, looking up at Tim

“Yes, it is! You kicked me from the game last time I did exactly that! You said I was cheating!” He yelled, standing up and angrily pointing at the board

Jonny stood up and leaned in close to Tim’s face, “and what are you going to do about it if I am?” he said, in a low voice.

Tim’s face coloured in what Jonny assumed was anger as he took a step back, “You know what, fuck you. This is dumb anyway,”

“Sore loser!” Jonny called out after him as he stalked away down the hall.

Jonny was angry that Tim left, he was angry that Tim let him get in his face like that, he was angry about the fact that Tim didn’t start a gunfight, Jonny was hoping he would’ve started a gunfight.

***

One time or another, they were in a city that had been absolutely ravaged by war. Tim, Jonny, Ashes, and the Toy Soldier had decided they wanted to look around the dead bodies for interesting items. Jonny and Tim, with their interest in guns and similar fashion styles, ended up just looking around together. This made Jonny angry, he just wanted to keep the cool things to himself but, Tim was there.

Jonny waved a large machine gun in the air, “Tim! Look what I found!” he pulled the trigger, released a few quick shots into the air.

Tim came over to inspect the gun.

“Give it here,” he said, reaching for the gun

“No, I found it,” Jonny said, moving it out of Tims reach and putting his other hand out to stop the gunner from falling.

Time righted himself and glared at Jonny, “I’m the gunner, no way you’ll even use that if you get it,”

“Well, maybe you’ll just have to take it from me then, win in a fight for once perhaps?” Jonny said, raising an eyebrow.

Tim blushed “you prick,” he walked away to inspect another body.

This made Jonny angry. He was so caught up in his anger, that he didn’t notice Tim calling his name until a bullet whizzed over his shoulder.

“You moron, I said your name like 7 times, come look at these goggles I found,” he said, waving something Jonny couldn’t quite see in the air

Jonny walked over and tried to snatch the goggles from Tim’s hand. Tim shoved him back with a firm hand on his chest. This made Jonny angry.

“Let me see, asshole, you called me over here to what? Not show me?” 

“Maybe I want something you have,” Tim said calmly, with a shrug.

“Oh fuck you,”

“Well?”

Jonny was angry, but he gave Tim the gun. Tim took it and dropped the goggles at Jonny’s feet. He picked them up and inspected them, only to see that one lens was missing, and the other was cracked. He pulled out his gun and began firing at Tim.

“You absolute fucking prick! These are broken!”

***

Jonny had been angry with Tim for a very long time. However, one day when they were fighting (not each other, they were fighting in a war), Jonny was fighting alongside Tim and saw someone stab him in the stomach with their bayonet. This made Jonny angry. He lunged at the person and shot them in the head, they fell to the ground and he shot them twice more for good measure.

Once they got back to Aurora, Jonny realized something. When Tim got hurt, he was angry. And that felt, well, it felt very _very_ different from whatever “anger” he had been feeling directed at Tim. He figured that Ashes knew anger well, and he would talk to them about it.

He wandered about the ship, looking for them, and he found them relaxing in the common room, where most people (aside from Nastya and Brian) spent their time. It was blessedly empty though.

“Ashes!” he called out upon seeing them,

They turned around, looking alarmed but calmed noticeably once they saw it was just Jonny.

“Yea, what?”

“You’re rather familiar with the feeling of anger and rage, right?” he asked, sitting down beside them

“Uhm, yea..? Why?” they looked at him suspiciously,

“Well, I thought I was angry with… one of our crewmates but now I’m not so sure, I figured you might help?”

“Well, you have to tell me more than that, so go on,” they say, raising an eyebrow

“Well, I get angry at him when he’s just, around. And, he winks at me, and it makes me angry, and he, he gets in my face and it makes me angry, and he wins when we fight, and he does all these things that just make me so angry, Ashes,”

Ashes smiles amusedly at him, “and how exactly does this anger _feel_ Jonny?”

He takes a moment to consider, brows furrowed as he thinks.

“Sort of like, like a balloon in my chest that gets bigger and bigger the angrier I get?” he said uncomfortably, not used to speaking about his feelings.

Ashes smiled at him and gave him a tight hug before getting up and saying “I know anger, Jonny, and that’s not it,” before leaving.

He stayed in the common room alone, stewing in his thoughts and what Ashes had said. If it wasn’t anger, then what could it be?


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> angst ahead

The next day, Jonny had made up his mind to talk to Nastya about it. Surely Ashes was wrong and just didn’t understand Jonny well enough, Nastya was practically his sister, she’d get it. He made his way down to the engine rooms where Nastya spent most of her time and prayed he wouldn’t walk in on her, well, her fucking the ship, as he opened the door.

Thankfully she wasn’t. She was leaning on some pipes and tubes while tinkering with a few small pieces of metal, and she looked up upon the sound of the doors opening.

“Jonny,” she nodded her head in greeting and went back to her tinkering.

Jonny sat down cross-legged in front of her “Nastya I need to talk to you about something,”

“No Jonny, I’m not telling you _how_ I fuck the ship, stop asking,” she said, not looking up

“I wasn’t gonna ask that! Not this time at least…”

She looked up and gave him a look saying _go on_.

“Well, I feel angry all the time, and I told Ashes about it, and they said it wasn’t anger,”

“Then what is it?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know. I still think it’s anger,”

“And you thought I’d be able to help you figure it out?”

“Well, you know me better than anyone else on the ship!”

“I guess I do. What did Ashes say it was, if not anger?”

“They didn’t, they just said it wasn’t anger,”

“Well, then what’s it feel like?”

“Sort of like a balloon in my chest, and the angrier I am at him, the bigger it gets,”

“That’s love,” she said almost immediately,

“No! I can’t be in _love_ with him, I hate him?”

“You can love and hate someone Jonny, now leave me alone, I’m busy,” She shooed him off.

He walked silently back to his room, dumbstruck by the realization that _holy shit, I might be in love with Tim._

He stewed in his thoughts that night and the next morning. Time rolled by and Tim asked to fight him (for some reason or another, he wasn’t exactly paying attention) and he agreed.

He fought worse than normal, and Tim noticed. This made Jonny angry. No, not angry. Not angry. This made Jonny feel, well, something.

“Oh, I’m fine,”

“Well, you’re not, because I beat you in like, a minute” Tim sighed

“Right, I guess there’s just something on my mind then,”

“...Do you want to keep fighting?”

“Yea, sure, yea,”

“Hand to hand or gunfight, or something else?” Tim asked, raising an eyebrow

“How about hand to hand” Jonny suggested, hoping the focus of hand to hand combat might help distract him from the fact that he might be in love with Tim.

Tim nodded and readied himself across the room. They fought, and unsurprisingly, Tim won. He had Jonny on his stomach, face pressed against the floor. He sat on the first mate’s thighs and had his hands pinned behind his back.

“Really Jonny? Step it up, this is almost too easy” Tim laughed, getting off of Jonny and pulling him up.

Jonny, still somewhat dazed by homoerotically fighting the man he had a massive crush on, stumbled forward and found himself leaning on Tim’s chest. To his surprise, Tim let him stay there. 

“Ok, Jonny something is clearly wrong right now,” Tim said, holding Jonny close to him.

“No, nothing is wrong,” Jonny said, his voice muffled against Tim’s chest.

“Jonny, I know you. We were in the war together, you may act like you don’t have feelings but you do, and something is clearly bothering you,”

Jonny sighed. He breathed in Tim’s scent, something he’d grown familiar with centuries ago. And then he said,

“I love you, Tim. Or I think I do,”

He felt Tim stiffen against him

“... You think you do?”

“Well, I don’t know, Tim. It… It’s hard to tell,” he said, face still buried in the fabric of Tim’s shirt.

That is, until Tim stepped away, letting Jonny fall and barely stop himself from breaking his nose on the metal ground. He scrambled to sit up and look up at Tim and was met with utter hatred.

“I… sorry Ti-”

“What the fuck! What the fuck Jonny! I can’t fucking believe you, you’re disgusting, you know that right?” he said, loudly.

Jonny felt tears well in his eyes and quickly blinked them away.

“After everything you fucking did? You let Bertie die, you let the doctor mechanize me, you’ve seen me get shot and done nothing, hell you’ve shot me over _nothing._ And you have the _audacity_ to say you FUCKING LOVE ME?” he started yelling and tears began to roll down his cheeks.

This isn’t what Jonny wanted. He didn’t know what he wanted but this wasn’t it. Maybe he’d secretly hoped Tim would feel the same, maybe he just wanted Tim to acknowledge it. But he didn’t want to make Tim feel bad, he didn’t want to make Tim cry. But here they were, Jonny, sitting on the floor on the brink of tears and Tim, standing above him, crying freely and yelling.

“HOW COULD YOU LOVE ME? HOW? YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING HEART YOU ASSHOLE,” Tim yelled, wiping at the tears that streamed from

This made Jonny angry. He knew anger, and this was it.

“Well fuck you, I guess,” his voice shook with the tears he was holding back, “Fuck you, and fuck Bertie, and fuck the war,” 

He ignored Tim’s calls after him as he left the room and stormed off.

***

He meant to go to his bedroom, but he found himself knocking on the door of the engine rooms. Turns out, Jonny really didn’t wanna stew with his feelings alone after being so harshly rejected, so his brain shut down and autopiloted him to Nastya.

The doors slid open and revealed Nastya sat at a desk, writing something down while closing examining some intricate thing made of cogs and gears.

“What?” she didn’t look away from her work

“Oh, I… I don’t know,” he sniffled a bit and stood awkwardly in the doorway

Something or other in his voice must’ve given it away because as soon as he finished speaking Nastya turned her chair around to face him and gestured for him to come. He walked over to her desk and sat on the ground, with his back up against the wall beside her desk.

“What’s wrong, Jonny?”

This was the straw that broke the camels back. He started bawling, loudly sniffling, and aggressively trying to wipe the tears as they fell. Nastya slipped out of her chair and sat down beside him, wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulder.

The pair sit in silence for who knows how long. It could be minutes, it could be hours. Nastya finally speaks up once Jonny’s crying slows down.

“So what happened?” she asks quietly, like saying it too loud will break the fragile composure Jonny’s mustered.

“I said I love him,” Jonny said, barely above a whisper

“And?”

“And he started yelling. He said he hates me, and he thinks I’m disgusting. I told him to fuck off.” there was a moment of hesitation, but he shook his head and drew in a shaky breath.

“Well?” she said, nudging his side

“Well, I didn’t want him to fuck off. Obviously” he mumbles.

“Maybe one day he won’t hate you, then,”

“He seems pretty fuckin dead set on it, considering the thing he brought up happened centuries ago,” Jonny rolled his eyes.

“Well, time will only heal those wounds,”

“Yeah, or I’ll fuckin get over him,”

“Which would you prefer, Jonny?”

“... I don’t know,”

“Sleep on it then. Come back to me once you know. Or if you need help figuring out,” she stood up and stretched before sitting back down at her desk.

“Goodnight, Nastya,”

She waved at him, and he left.

***

That night his dreams, well, more accurately his nightmares, kept replaying Tims yelling at him. Tim’s words ran through his head every time he drifted into sleep, “You don’t even have a fucking heart,” 

He woke up that morning in tears. And he knew what he’d prefer.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell about the mechs with me on my Tumblr :3 https://hollow-boness.tumblr.com/


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